


Caput Gerat Lupinum

by Kieron_ODuibhir



Series: Greywing and the Flying Outlaws [3]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: (because Roy), (because Superwoman), (was a Talon), Alternate Universe - Villains, Dick Grayson is a Talon, Earth-3, Fluff and Angst, Flying Outlaws, Friendship, Gen, Good!Blackfire, Humor, Implied Past Non-Con, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Recreational Drug Use, Roy cares more than he wants to admit, Socially Awkward Assassins, Starfire is a terrifying BAMF, Team Dynamics, royalty is serious business
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-08
Updated: 2015-01-19
Packaged: 2018-03-06 14:33:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3137849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kieron_ODuibhir/pseuds/Kieron_ODuibhir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>('May a wolf's head be upon him.')</p><p>Three against the world is working pretty well so far, since the three are a top-notch sniper, a super-powered alien princess, and one of the most dangerous assassins on the planet. </p><p>On the other hand, when Arsenal is the most normal and well-adjusted person in the room, that room is having problems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ikaros and the Lotus Eater

**Author's Note:**

> Vogelfrei ('bird-free') and Caput gerat lupinum ('wolf-headed') are both archaic legal phrases referring to the way an outlaw is as legal to kill as a wild animal, though the German term is less pejorative.
> 
> (Also, AO3 apparently doesn't believe Kori can have gen relationships; it kept autocompleting those tags to /somebody even after I typed the &.)

Grayson had slept all day, after another night of surveillance on the girl they'd been hired to kidnap, and gotten up around dusk looking in serious need of caffeine. "Kori around?" he'd grunted when he found Roy in the kitchen.

"Roof," said Roy. Watching the sunset right now, but she'd probably be up there for hours; she spent a lot of time looking at the stars, when she had a chance.

She'd pointed out where she thought Tamaran was, once, and when he teased her about not being _sure,_ she'd asked if _he'd_ be able to chart his way back to Earth from some planet he'd never heard of. Which, obviously, not. Then she'd dropped him on top of a flagpole and left him there, which was Starfire for irritated but not really mad; Roy might not be the ninja Grayson was, but he could climb down a friggin' flagpole.

Dick mumbled acknowledgement, practically like a normal person, showered briskly, and then went out for coffee—the apartment hadn't come with a coffee maker and none of them expected to stay here long enough for it to be worth buying one, and Grayson only drank the instant stuff when there was some reason not to go out for something better.

Roy finished his pizza in peace, threw away the plate, and thought for a second. Sightlines for his part in the upcoming abduction had been all scouted days ago, so he didn't have work till tomorrow night, unless Dick got ambushed on his coffee run or something and required rescue, and he'd finished the book he was reading yesterday, and the TV got basically no channels. He nodded to himself. Good as time as any. He dug out the rubbing alcohol and started sterilizing. At the kitchen table. Grayson might be back before he was done, but that wasn't Roy's problem.

Dick's face went tight every time he saw Roy with a needle. Or brown or white powder, or really anything related to drugs, and in response Roy had gotten even more blatant about it. He hadn't really been part of the scene back in Star, or even gotten high socially more than a couple of times—he had _work_ , and besides, the people who grouped together around things like shooting up were the ones who made it a big deal, and then the habit got out of control, and Roy had _way_ better things to do than turn into a junkie. Oliver had never cared so long as it didn't get in the way of work, and Kori had never minded, except one time when she'd wanted his attention and he'd been too high to care.

It was kind of a money sink now that he wasn't getting the same kind of cash flow he had with the syndicate, but so long as he wasn't taking it out of Dick's share, how was it his business?

A shared apartment meant kind of close quarters, and while Roy totally _could_ hole up in the bedroom, it wouldn't exactly be private anyway, since he didn't have his own space, and then he'd look like he felt like he had something to be ashamed of. He needed the stove to prep the dose anyway, since he'd never gotten in the habit of hauling a candle around, so kitchen table it was.

Dick came back in with two bags of groceries just as Roy finished wrapping self-adhesive tape around his bicep. His eyes flicked over the empty spoon, the needle lying on a clean towel spread on the tabletop, Roy's arm with a light tourniquet. Flared his nostrils at the kitchen smelling of rubbing alcohol and citric acid and the biting bitterness of heroin. Lips pressed thin, he closed the door firmly and crossed the kitchen in silence to put the food away.

Richard Grayson didn't believe in living on take-out. Richard Grayson didn't approve of illegal drugs. Richard Grayson was the biggest square of any wanted killer Roy had ever met, let alone robbed banks with.

He turned the syringe under his fingers on the white terrycloth. "Something you want to say?"

"No." Dick slid two half-gallons of milk onto the top fridge shelf with slightly more clunking than was probably necessary. (Richard Grayson _drank milk_. All by itself, out of a cup, like he was five.) A full gallon of milk meant he'd also bought breakfast cereal that he expected everyone to eat. _And_ that he thought they'd still be here day after tomorrow.

(…this team was starting to feel slightly like being married, except with significantly less sex. Not that he particularly wanted it to contain more sex; he wasn't all that into dudes, and team orgies sounded like a spectacularly dysfunctional idea, even if Kori would go along, which she wouldn't because Superwoman had given her so many issues in that area Roy had once seen her break a man's neck for wolf-whistling at her on a bad day. Putting up with passive-aggressive bitchiness without getting sex out of the deal was kind of a new thing for Roy, though, and definitely not one of the pluses of working in a team.)

He made a note to get laid sometime soon. But for the moment, arguing with bitchy assassin about drugs. He raised his eyebrows.

"I think there is."

"Nope. Until it starts causing problems for the rest of us, it's your business what you put in your body. Do your thing."

Roy snorted. "Well, that's real big of you."

"Or don't do your thing." Dick was now emptying a paper bag of fruit onto the countertop between fridge and sink. So far as Roy was concerned this was the natural habitat of dirty dishes, but whatever. Now it was the habitat of five bananas, two pears, and three bright red apples.

"I don't need your permission, I'm just getting a little tired of you making disapproving faces like somebody's prim little granny."

Their stealth specialist turned around. He might be annoyed; it was hard to tell. His hair was falling in his eyes. "I haven't said anything."

"You don't have to."

Grayson rolled his shoulders in a little shrug, his eyes flicking away to the tabletop where the bag of powder and the waiting needle lay, and then to the floor. "I guess I just don't like to see you taking that kind of risk."

"What, and jumping off five hundred foot cliffs into the sea is safe? We're not taking a chance ripping off superheroes? _Work_ is risky. This is nice, stable recreation in comparison. I'm careful." He'd been more careful in Star, when he'd had a regular supplier who knew better than to mess with him by giving him anything but the best, but he still didn't buy from just anyone, or do anything stupid with his needles.

Dick shook his head. "I didn't mean disease and dosage, risky. It's just a bad idea to need something like that."

"I don't _need_ it, Grayson. It's just a sometimes thing."

"That's what you say now." Their team ninja shook his head again; you could have sworn he was staring right through the apartment wall. "It's bad enough our bodies come pre-loaded with addictions like food and sleep without adding extra, more complicated things."

Roy could have argued more about whether he was an addict, but he wasn't likely to change Dick's mind, and it was better tactics to turn the conversation around on him.

"You don't like food and sleep?" The guy was a light sleeper and got up in the night a lot, but Roy wouldn't have pegged him for a real insomniac, and he sure _acted_ like he enjoyed eating.

"I like them fine. It would just be nice not to _need_ them." The thousand-yard stare opened out to even further away, this haunted expression that flashed across his face sometimes; Roy wasn't used to feeling things like sympathy, and hated reminders that working under (aka belonging to) Superwoman and Owlman had been very different from working for the Archer. Every time one of his teammates got that look, he tried to change the subject. If Wayne had starved Dick as a kid, or forced him to stay awake for four days straight until he couldn't tell hallucination from reality, or whatever, Roy _did not want to know._

Maybe it wasn't even the Owl; living on the run probably made eating and sleeping inconvenient necessities sometimes. Just because Roy had never gotten to that desperate point personally didn't mean Dick hadn't. He wasn't Ultraman. He hadn't had anyone like Kori to watch his six, when he'd first been finding his feet outside the Court of Owls, either.

Roy shot Grayson a hostile look, because he'd taken a lot of the fun out of shooting up by getting his doom and gloom in the anticipation stage, and stretched out his arm again. Not defiantly, because Grayson didn't have any authority over him to defy. The veins were standing out nicely, and he located the main one in his elbow (if he was an _addict_ he'd have scarred it up too much to use by now; fuck you Greywing) and reached for the syringe.

"You definitely get to do the poking next time I need an IV," said Dick. He had Talon-face on again, blank and forbidding, despite the fact that he'd just said something that was probably a joke, which most likely meant Roy had actually managed to hurt his feelings.

Or maybe he was embarrassed to have exposed a weakness from his past like that. Roy didn't really get why the guy kept acting like he trusted him. Sure, Roy'd introduced him as 'my friend Dickhead' to his contacts in Portugal, but Roy had had plenty of friends he didn't trust an inch. Sometimes the hardened outlaw assassin acted like such a _kid._

"Duh," was all he said in reply. "Have you seen Kori trying to be delicate? She'd probably stab straight through your elbow."

Dick's mouth bent up at the sides, although the rest of his face still wasn't moving. "She's not that bad."

Roy shook his head. "When are you even gonna need an IV, you super-healing weirdo?" he asked, aligning the needle. If the asshat was going to just keep standing there, he could just feel free to watch.

"The electrum repairs tissue better than fluids," Dick shrugged, watching the hovering syringe. "If I bleed enough, an intravenous electrolyte solution is a really good idea. I _can_ just drink a lot of Gatorade, but there's a high chance of passing out before I rebalance."

 _Stop it with the fucking trust,_ Roy thought viciously, and slipped the needle under his skin.

"Roy," Dick said.

"Shut up, Grayson."

He depressed the plunger, emptying the syringe into his vein, his pulse picking up in expectation.

He gave himself maybe twelve seconds until the rush, and if Grayson said one more goddamned word…well, he didn't actually know what he'd do; attacking a death machine in human form right after shooting up reflected the level of bad judgment Roy had mostly had beaten out of him already even back when they'd _first_ met. Dick had been maybe fourteen or fifteen, then, and scary as fuck. Nine more seconds…

Only the exact control of his reflexes he'd once relied on to work with Talon without looking like a twitchy basketcase kept him from tearing a great, hazardous rip in his own vein with the half-withdrawn needle, when _something_ hit the roof of the building with a crash that shook the walls. Moments later something else landed outside with an even bigger _thump._

Roy slid the needle the rest of the way out and put it absently back on the towel while exchanging a glance with Grayson. Dick flicked his eyes upward. Roy nodded. Dick raised an eyebrow; Roy rolled his eyes; Dick shrugged, and then pelted out the door and down the hall toward the stairs. Roy, with the thick taste of heroin hitting his tongue from the inside, grabbed his bow and a quiver from the corner, because guns were great but they were _loud,_ and plenty of things that were fast enough to dodge bullets didn't even notice an arrow coming until they'd already been shot. He paused, sliced the tie off his arm with an arrowhead, and followed.

They were a team. Kori didn't fight without their backup. No matter how terrible the timing.

The rush hit Roy halfway up the stairwell, maybe ten seconds after the drug had hit his bloodstream, and he had to stop for a second and clutch at the banister, and he didn't _care_ what was happening on the roof because Jesus _fuck_ , he always forgot just how good this felt.

He hadn't even taken a big hit. Jesus.

Fucking _H_ Christ.

It was probably at least a minute before his head rolled back from the clouds and he got up off his knees, picked up his bow again, and continued toward the roof, in a lot less hurry than before. Building hadn't come down around his ears while he was in his happy place, or even shaken again that he'd noticed, so what were the odds it was something Starfire and Greywing couldn't handle?

The smallest of the three crashes so far rocked the aging timbers of the building, and he shrugged, spun an arrow to the string, and picked up the pace a little. At least he hadn't run into any pissed-off neighbors stupid enough to run toward the sound of smashing. Heh. Nope, only he and Dick were that stupid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While I am definitely not endorsing illegal drug use, Roy as depicted here isn't drug-dependent (yet) and is for the most part being as safe as you *can* be about doing something this stupid. Except that it's actually a particularly terrible idea to shoot up in solitude, because then there's no one around to call an ambulance if you, say, stop breathing. Which happens. Just to be clear.


	2. Eteocles (and Esau)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am a terrible person who makes terrible references in my terrible chapter titles.

When Roy made it to the roof, there was no battle to join. Dick was standing out in plain sight, and Kori was hovering, face to face with another flying woman wearing an outfit that seemed to be made mostly of belts. One of them was even around her waist. That one had pockets.

The unknown woman's eyes shone a pale sort of purple, matching the energy field flickering around her as she hovered; her hair was darker than their teammate's, though nearly as riotously huge, and her skin not nearly as orange, but Roy felt he could say with some certainty that this was another Tamaranean. Intense glowing staredown of doom. There'd been a twitch of the new girl's shoulders when he came into view, so he was pretty sure he'd been seen, but she didn't look away from Starfire, as he moved forward to stand just behind Dick.

" _Kori,_ " said the brunette meaningfully. Sounded sort of fed up, and he wondered what he'd missed.

There were two craters pocking the tar paper, a big one at the top of the west wall, where it looked like something had messily shaved off a chunk of the edge of the roof, and a smaller one just to Dick's right. Crashing noises one and two, check. Three was probably down on the street.

" _Commy,_ " answered Kori, with a sort of sarcastic sugary tone and all the sneer in the world.

Roy looked back and forth between them. "Commy?" he repeated. "Are we re-fighting the Cold War? Is it the _space_ Cold War?" _Is it the Naked Space Women Cold War? Because I could go for spectator seats to that._ Whoah, had Kori's planet had a Communist revolution she never mentioned, and that was how she wound up getting sold to Superwoman? Romanoffs had it worse, being shot and melted, but damn.

Weird questions broke up standoffs nine times out of ten, though not always for the better, and the creepy glowing-eye game of chicken finally ended. "My crippled sister," Starfire informed him, tossing her head in scorn and a flurry of rich red curls. "Komand'r."

Oh. Roy paid his eyes up and down Komand'r. ' _Kommi.'_ She didn't _look_ crippled. Damn fine legs, actually.

"Are these your friends?" she asked, smiling at Dick first and then Roy. (Of _course_. Hanging around ridiculously good-looking people was going to give him a complex, at this rate. Eh. All good. Worry about it some other time, maybe.)

Kori flicked her fingers at them. "Arsenal and Greywing. Not that it's your business. Don't pretend we are close, _big sister_. What do you want?"

Komand'r wavered a little in the air, so her brown-black hair fanned out and caught the dying remnants of sunlight, which made it look almost as red as Kori's, and made a wry sort of look. Face. Expression. "I set out intending to free you, but it seems you've taken care of that for yourself, so I guess I'm just here to bring you home."

Kori had been talking about getting home ever since Roy had first met her, years ago, when she was still in chains, but now she just narrowed her eyes. "Why would you do that?"

"You're my little sister, stupid. I'd do anything for you." _Seemed_ honest, but Kori knew her and Roy didn't. He'd wait and see. Komand'r hesitated. "If you're happy here, that's wonderful," she said, a little hastily. "You don't need to return to Tamaran. But I at least want to…invite you to my coronation."

Kori went stiff as a board, and her glow sharpened in a way Roy knew as _very bad news,_ even through the drug-induced excellent mood he was currently enjoying _._ He backpedalled several feet. Grayson didn't have the sense to follow.

" _Your what?_ "

Komand'r clenched her fists, and ghostly starbolts formed around them before apparently being forced away. "My coronation," she repeated. "I had it deferred, because I couldn't go looking for you if I was Queen, and I couldn't give up on you, but…I'm the heir now. Father's health is very bad, and he's stepping down."

The pink light around Koriand'r continued to grow, even as the sun vanished completely below the horizon. " _You were passed over!_ You are _excluded_ from the line of inheritance, Blackfire!"

"I can fly, now," the older princess pointed out, whatever that had to do with anything. "Whatever the Psions did to us, it didn't just give us this mutation," she raised her hand and half-charged another of those dark bolts before letting it go again, which was pretty ballsy with Kori floating right there, furious, with two fully ready starbolts just waiting to fire. "It fixed my energy-conversion problem."

"You have no right," Kori spat. "Taking advantage of my absence—coming here to gloat—"

"It's not…Kori, I really am sorry." The alien folded her hands, and fidgeted slightly. It seemed like she was kind of shy, which was weird; Roy had thought Kori's total lack of any hesitance at all was a Tamaranean thing. "I escaped, after they resold us, and I went home. Things were bad, but I broke Riyand'r out of a Citadel ship where they were holding him, and rallied the army. We punched a pretty sizeable hole in their forces and drove them off, and the current treaty should hold for a while. So I'm not a cripple anymore, and I kind of saved the planet." She cracked a smile. "I'm forgiven for being born on an inauspicious day. I'm actually _popular._ "

"So you will take the throne," Kori growled.

Komand'r dipped her head a little.

Kori snapped. Pink energy bolts sliced the air and her voice rose into a shriek of rage. " _You cannot take this from me!_ " She flung herself forward in flight almost as fast as the bolts and struck with both fists right after they landed, sending Blackfire spiraling away through the air. " _It's mine! My birthright!_ "

Hell. As much as Kori had talked about her birthright, Roy wasn't really surprised. Kommi was maybe not a very good sister if she hadn't expected this, not that Roy was that up on the responsibilities of siblings, even within his own species.

The big sister had recovered from her spin in time to avoid one of those nasty flying kicks to the gut, and she declined to take the opening Kori left by rocketing past her, feetfirst. Noble idiot. "I'm _sorry!_ " she repeated, angry now. "If you'd made it home in time to get all the glory, maybe things wouldn't have turned out this way!"

As Kori whirled in the air with a scream that was either wordless or Tamaranean that Roy didn't know, he contemplated the possibility that Komand'r was actually intentionally pissing her baby sis off while playing the nice girl, so she could be self-righteous about the fight. The punch she took to the face a second later made him lower the odds, but then the bolt she'd been charging didn't shred away with the distraction of being punched, or shoot off anywhere, it just stayed crackling around her fist as she drove it into the join of Kori's shoulder, resulting in a purplish exploding punch, which made Kori hiss in fury and sock her in the gut, which Blackfire answered with a pretty serious blow to the ribs. It only got more brutal from there, and Roy was fully prepared to dodge aside if one of the dueling princesses threw a starbolt or her sister in his direction, because he was pretty sure they'd forgotten they had an audience.

He glanced sidelong at his fellow spectator, shifting the quiver on his shoulder. "Think we should help?"

Dick shook his head, not bothering to break up his natural blank-solemn expression with any pointless emoting, and not taking his eyes off the combatants. "Only if she really needs us. This isn't our fight."

Specializing in a support role like sniper, on a team with a flying tank and a ninja, meant Roy had a lot less respect for personal fights than he'd had when he was a teenager, or even than he'd had at twenty-five, but Kori was from a warrior culture so, fine. He didn't especially want to piss her off, and so far Blackfire didn't seem all that dangerous.

Well. As flying Tamaranean warrior princesses went.

He gave a rolling sort of shrug and moved back a bit further so he could lean against the door to the stairwell and watch the fight in comfort. He loved looking at pretty things when he was high—had trouble taking the time to appreciate them otherwise, but they always seemed more...well, more, like this. Kori had shown off for him occasionally before, but this was…this was really awesome. It would be cool just as a fight even if the combatants weren't gorgeous, even without the bursts of colored light through the deepening twilight, but he hadn't really been kidding earlier, _this_ he could watch all night. Too bad Kori didn't go in for the bare midriff look.

"We don't need to do this, Koriand'r," Blackfire panted eventually, falling back a little from the rapid lightshow of a slugfest, with blood running down her lip.

"Not if you surrender," Starfire retorted, poking measuringly at a contusion in one of her eyebrows that was threatening to become a split.

"Never."

Kori grinned. It was almost more of a smirk, really. All confidence. "When we were training on Okaara, I always beat you."

Her sister didn't smile. "That was a long time ago."

Kori _moved._ Before Roy caught up, the fight had turned into a messy, sickeningly three-dimensional grappling match that ended with Komand'r's left arm pinned to her side and the right twisted over her head in a really painful-looking lock. Kori grinned just behind her sister's right ear. "You may have finally gained flight, you freak, but you haven't mastered it yet." She jerked on the locked joint, and Komand'r grunted in the sharp pain of someone having their shoulder dislocated. Dick winced.

"Maybe we should do something," he admitted.

"Yeah?" Roy asked, raising his eyebrows. "What?"

"Kori," said Blackfire tightly, "I've always loved you."

"And I've always _not cared_."

"Fine." A purple starbolt went off right in Kori's face, and Komand'r headbutted her in the nose an instant later, which gained her enough slack to drive her unpinned elbow into a point in Kori's gut that Roy knew was almost as sensitive as it would be on a human. He whistled a little at the efficient brutality.

Komand'r broke free and fell back, and the sisters contemplated one another for a second or so. "Your style has changed," Kori remarked, which was the nicest thing she'd said since Blackfire arrived, never mind since the coronation bomb had dropped.

"I've been fighting a war," her big sister shrugged.

Roy knew almost nothing about this Citadel crowd, but they were strong enough to seriously threaten a planet of Koris, so he figured they were pretty tough. There weren't many people on that power level on Earth, and well over half of the ones there _were_ had been with the Society during the war, so Kori hadn't fought many of them. She'd also failed to account for the fact that her sister's hands were deadly weapons even when they couldn't move, which was just sloppy.

He wasn't sure how this was going to go.

Roy was on Kori's side, of course, because that was how being a team _worked_ , but he also got a vague satisfaction out of seeing Komand'r, who'd apparently spent most of both their lives as the underdog, getting some licks in. If this had been a basketball game, or even a boxing match, he'd have sat back and cheered all good moves from either side, but as Kori scythed her right hand in an attack she'd bastardized off Dick's blade-hand and polished into the cleanest killing blow in her repertoire, he was pretty clear this wasn't a game.

Kori had changed, too, he was sure, since they'd been kids together. He wondered if Blackfire saw it. What she'd say if she saw the scars the Lash of Submission had left on her sister's scrupulously covered back. Though apparently she'd been sold at least once, too, so maybe she'd be another one like Dick that 'got' it better than Roy.

Komand'r kneed Kori in the face and Kori rallied, grabbed two handfuls of her sister's hair, swung her 270 degrees and slammed her full-length into the side of the building, which shook again. Glass cracked and jingled to the ground.

"Try not to bring the place down, huh?" Roy called, suppressing the urge to laugh. His team was the best.

"Mm," Kori grunted, which was as close to an apology as you ever got out of her.

She did keep it further from the building after that, but not so far it spoiled Roy's view.

He'd known there was a reason he liked her.

Komand'r was tough, and she was pretty cold, but the longer Roy watched the more he saw that she didn't have access to the sheer ruthless brutality Kori did. The longer the fight went on, the harder she made Starfire work for every blow she landed, the deeper Kori reached into the ball of rage she'd nursed since long before Roy ever met her. The rage he'd noticed years ago when he'd seen her shredding Superwoman's enemies like paper and _known,_ the way he knew the weight of a hand-fletched arrow and the trajectory of a perfect shot, that it wasn't them she hated, they were just all she could reach…

Blackfire hit the roof of the building next door, and didn't get up fast enough. Kori was on her like pink lightning and had her in a better submission hold than the last, Komand'r's explosive hands buried in her own gut, with Kori's arm across her sister's windpipe in a solid chokehold. Her teeth flashed white on orange.

"If you'd do anything for me, then _die!"_ Kori snarled, all triumph, tightening the arm until Blackfire's eyes started to widen in instinctive desperation. Even Tamaranean royalty needed to breathe. "Die, or step aside. Your place is at my feet. You have _always_ been below me!"

"Shit," said Roy, gut twisting. Dick was already moving.

"Kori!" he called out from the very edge of their roof, and her head actually turned slightly, though she didn't let up on the strangulation. "Star, come on. You don't really want to do this."

"I really do."

Dick hesitated. Roy wasn't sure what he'd _expected_ to hear in response to that pretty lame opening line. You could tell he didn't have a lot of experience with the touchy-feely. More carefully he asked, "You hate her that much?"

"She was never worth hating," Kori replied with a shrug, and then her face fell back into a glower. "But thinking she can take what's mine, that's unforgivable."

"Kori," Dick said unhappily. Roy would have just looked like a putz trying the sad eyes, but Grayson's pathetic face actually got Starfire's attention again. "She's your sister."

"Which is why she's in my way."

Dick took that in. Nodded. "So make it fast."

Roy blinked a couple of times. Okay, yes, he was slightly high right now, but he was pretty sure this was not him losing track of the situation. Hairpin turn much?

"What?" said Kori, just as confused and a lot more hostile about it.

Dick bounced slightly on the balls of his feet on the edge of the roof, a sort of full-body shrug, hands curling inward at the wrist in the way they did when he was thinking about killing someone. "Get it over with. If this is about getting her out of the way, not about making her suffer, hurry up and kill her already. Snap her neck, that would work, right?" He did that little cocking bird thing with his head, and Roy couldn't see it but he bet Dick had turned his face on again for a second, to do that creepy little grin with the teeth. A lot like the one Kori wasn't making anymore.

"I…." said the younger princess, but she didn't snap Blackfire's neck.

It was hard to tell exactly where a Tamaranean was looking, because of the solid-color eyes, but Roy was pretty sure they were _both_ staring at Dick now, even if Komand'r was looking close to passing out and had to watch him out of the very far right of her peripheral vision.

"If it's political, there's no reason to draw it out," said Grayson, holding Kori's gaze. "You want me to do it?"

"Christ," said Roy, because they were all killers, but there was something so intensely _personal_ about killing your sister, politics or not, that it felt kind of like Dick had just offered to go down on somebody's girl or slide the needle into Roy's vein, and okay his scruples were a little weird, but the point was that even for people like them, there were lines, and Dick had just barreled across one.

"I can do my own killing," Kori snapped, and tightened her arm a little more. Komand'r's feet were doing that spasmodic twitching thing people did when their bodies desperately wanted to kick for air but didn't have the oxygen.

"I respect a princess who can handle her own political assassinations," answered Dick, and damn if Roy could tell whether he was sarcastic.

"I am _not_ like her," Kori growled, aura snapping. "She ached to dominate everything that lived. I just want what is _mine_." 'She' would be Superwoman; the gossip mill had it she'd poisoned her own mother to seize control of the Amazons in time to join the war. Rumor had something similar about that jerk Orin, a few years further back. Roy had _liked_ Queen Atalanta, all two times they'd met. Not that racist, for an Atlantean—and not quite ruthless enough to be royalty.

"So is this normal, on Tamaran?" he asked.

Dick and Kori both jerked their heads around to look at him like they'd forgotten he existed. Probably had, bastards. He jerked his chin toward the weakly thrashing older princess. "You have a long royal tradition of bumping off inconvenient relatives?" The role of assassination in politics was rarely quite as blatant as Dick's last mission as Talon, but everyone knew that a natural death and a position of power had never been easy things to combine. At _least_ a quarter of all Popes ever had probably been murdered. Probably well over half. It was hard to tell, given they were mostly old and almost never abdicated.

"It's not unheard-of," said Starfire, but she didn't lift her head proudly. People who everyone knew had killed their way onto the throne weren't seen in a good light, he was guessing.

"Well, _we're_ not going to tell on you," he shrugged. He'd hidden bodies for his friends before. He was a professional; no big. "How are the space cops on forensics?"

Kori frowned, not angry so much as calculating. She'd never seriously considered the practicalities of getting away with murder on her homeworld, Roy was guessing. Royal privilege. Dick was watching her, some tautness to his face that didn't add up to a complete expression, but at least you could tell he was feeling tension.

Then Blackfire spasmed, a massive twitch in every limb that Roy took for a death-throe in the instant before a massive wave of purple energy blasted from her in every direction.

Roy, half a rooftop away, was thrown back against the door where he'd been leaning earlier, his breath half knocked out of him. His arrows were all trapped between his shoulder and the door so he ignored the bow, snatched out a sidearm and pointed it in Komand'r's direction, more out of principle and instinct than any real intention to shoot. Dick had been blasted off his feet and gone spinning clear over Roy, who was slightly concerned for all of half a second before both Greywing's hands clenched around the top of the stairwell, yanking him to a stop before he was thrown clear off the roof. Good; he was always cranky after he had to heal broken bones.

Kori, at ground zero, had been smashed into the tar paper and lay unmoving for the seconds it took Roy to get his bearings again, and for her sister to struggle unsteadily to her feet, and hesitate, staring down at her until Kori's hand twitched and her eyes flew open, green pools of rage. Komand'r pressed her lips together and refused to look away. Roy had a perfect bead on her head, but even if bullets did her in, Kori probably wouldn't appreciate it. He held his fire.

"It's… _my_ birthright, Koriand'r," she panted. "I was born first. If it could be taken from me, you should have known it could be taken from you."

"Gloating… _bitch!_ " Kori growled, and lunged.

Blackfire retreated. The actual belt at her waist came away in Kori's hand, and for a minute she looked ready to wrestle for it. Then she glanced at Roy and Dick, who was probably looming down in the menacing crouch he'd mastered before hitting puberty, and clenched her jaw. "I said I was sorry," she snapped, and then ran for it, going over the edge of the building in what Roy assumed was a controlled drop.

"Coward!" Kori shouted after her. She got to her feet, wobbling, and staggered ferociously to the edge of the roof, but that was as far as she got before a shiny silver oblong that looked an _awful_ lot like a flying saucer blasted up from the ground, past them, and out of sight into the sky.

Roy had no intention of taking anything resembling responsibility for the crater in the street. Just saying.

All three of them stared after the departing vessel blankly for the few seconds it took to vanish among the stars, and then Starfire, once more on her knees, added another crater to the roof with her fist.

"Kori. I'm so sorry," said Dick, as he dropped soundlessly to the roof surface beside Roy. Who thought for a minute he was apologizing either for offering to kill her sister or delaying for her so she didn't pull it off, before twigging that that little ship was probably the best chance Kori was ever going to have to get home, and it had just flown away. (Because Kori went and tried to murder the pilot, admittedly, but Roy didn't totally blame her. She really should work on controlling her temper, though.)

"Uh, yeah," he agreed, stowing his gun even as he kept an eye on her hunched shoulders. "Rotten luck."

Their dangerous lady snorted, climbed to her feet, and ghosted back to their rooftop with a careless burst of flight. Then she grinned, the expression dimly lit by the glow of her own green eyes and eerie, and held up the pouch-studded belt she'd torn free. "But also excellent luck. I find my worthless sister had both a subspace communicator and an interstellar credit authenticator on her, and left them behind when she escaped."

"Too bad she didn't keep the keys to the spaceship in there, too," smirked Roy, speaking from memories of a stint of purse-snatching in his early teens, before Queen had taken an interest. It was also handy behavior in kidnap targets.

"Doesn't matter," Kori brushed it aside. "With this, I can…what's the expression…? Call a cab." Her teeth flashed though the night again. "I'm going _home._ "

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The stuff about Kom's disability and resulting disinheritance and the Psion experiments is canon; Starfire is technically a meta as well as an alien. Flying is normal on Tamaran, energy bolts are not. Canon Kom was very bitter and tried to murder her sister, then defected to their enemies, and then things really got nasty.
> 
> In this world, Tamaran did not fall to treason, Kom did not enslave Kori for kicks, their eventual mutual captivity by the Psions did not end in Kom's Citadel troops coming to her rescue, and Superwoman wound up buying Starfire on the interplanetary slave market, because BDSM philosophy vis-a-vis 'good' and 'bad' submission and dominance was a big part of early Wonder Woman, no lie, and the proper keeping of slave girls specifically came up. Kori working for Diana as a heavy hitter on the Amazon's Furies is from Flashpoint. The Lash of Submission is indeed the evil counterpart of the Lasso of Truth. >> I regret nothing.
> 
> Training with the Warlords of Okaara and the sisters' baby brother Riyand'r are also taken from canon. The energy-wave-splosion power is one Kori has used occasionally in a bad spot, but not often since it wipes her out, and she usually has allies in the line of fire.


	3. Homo Sacer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This segment was where this storyline shifted arbitrarily into the present tense over on ffdotnet; if anyone noticed or minded, they didn't tell me, but in this story format it obviously had to be changed. I have no proofreading beta, so if I missed switching the tense of any verbs drop me a comment to that effect?

Kori declared the alien cell phone would get better reception with less gaseous interference in the way, or something like that, and shot off into the stratosphere to place her call. Dick and Roy stood around for a while, Roy sort of looking at the stars as the last trace of pink faded in the west, and not thinking about anything, which was easier to do when he was high, and Dick switching between looking up at the sky and over the edge of the roof, until he finally got bored or chilly or something, made a little huffing sound, and headed back into the stairwell.

Things in his life tended to begin and end on rooftops, Roy thought vaguely, as he drifted after Dick for lack of a better idea. His father had put him on the roof of their cabin to keep him above the smoke, when he went off to fight forest fires and burned to death. Oliver Queen first found him skulking on a roof when he was fourteen, that first autumn after Raymond died and the Nation tried to stick him in the foster system, and Roy ran off with almost nothing to his name except the bow the old man had made him, and the arrows he'd made himself.

And last year, in the last days of what they're calling the Injustice War, he was stuck in his sniper's nest on a roof a block away, out of ammo but with perfect line of sight, when the vigilante called Lady Shiva sliced Queen's head off. He should just stay off roofs.

He liked them, though. He wouldn't be Arsenal, wouldn't even be Roy Harper, if he didn't gravitate to a good vantage point.

Down on the fourth floor again, still without meeting any neighbors in the stairwell either because neighbors in this dump were mythical or because people around here knew better than to get in the way of a super-brawl, Dick ran some more water into the pot Kori'd ruined the other night trying to make mac 'n' cheese, and started scouring it, furiously, with a whole palmful of dish soap and one of those green scrubby things, like evil plastic moss, that might have an actual name, but if so Roy didn't know it.

It didn't seem weird for a second, and then it seemed like _the weirdest thing anyone had ever done_ , and Roy stared at his teammate's tense shoulders for a second. Maybe a lot of seconds.

Something clicked, through the fading warm-fuzzy haze of his hit, and he swore, which earned him Dick's attention.

"What?" He glanced at Roy, then back at the pot, then abruptly looked disgusted and washed his hands of the mess, literally.

"You son of a bitch," Roy marveled.

Dick shut off the water and turned, drying his hands and giving Roy what was probably supposed to look like his full attention.

"The milk," Roy said viciously.

Grayson blinked. "Sorry?" He gave a concerned little squint and Roy wanted to bash his stupid face in because he had no right to emote so well when every single thing about him was so fake.

"The milk, and the pans, and—" Roy stopped, because there were a dozen solid details like that he could list and a few dozen more that slid around the edges of consciousness refusing to be pinned down, little things Dick had said and done over the months. "You've been _nesting_."

"I don't…"

"Yes, you do. You want to settle down, is that it? Park us here till the end of time? Maybe get a fucking nine to five while you're at it? What the hell." Roy felt used, and he couldn't even have said how, exactly, but it was deep-down, curling out of his bones. Even through the dopamine rush he hadn't yet burned through, it made him sick and angry.

Dick wasn't looking at him. Or making any expression, but that was normal, right up until he laughed. It was that same cracked little sound he'd made that first night on a roof in Detroit, and Roy wondered if every other laugh he'd ever heard from the guy had been a pretense.

"Nesting, huh? Maybe. But I don't want to stay here, no. Kolkata, Prague, Dubhlin; so long as it isn't Gotham, I don't care."

He turned further away, to the counter where he'd piled up the fresh fruit less than an hour ago, shrugged, flicked one of the shiny red apples into the air, and impaled it before it could fall, with one sharp dart of a knife that more or less appeared in his hand. If Roy watched carefully, he could usually spot the blade slipping from Grayson's sleeve, but most people wouldn't have a prayer.

Dick crunched into the transfixed apple, implacable white ranks of teeth, the line of his back all nonchalance. "I'm gypsy blood, Harper. Home isn't a place."

"So what you're saying is you don't want us to _leeeave_ you." It was unnecessarily shitty of him to draw out the 'leave' in a whine like that, but he didn't care. He'd've liked to split his knuckles on the guy's teeth, but the only combat area where Roy was the unquestioned superior of the two of them was at range, and he knew it.

He thought he was about as good at _most_ things, bar stealth and maneuver, especially anything armed because armament was _his_ specialty, knew he carried more muscle, but that goddamn healing factor was a problem, meant Dick could afford to take hits that Roy flat couldn't. He was faster, too. It wouldn't be a smart fight. He wasn't sure he cared. (He wasn't sure how much of that was the heroin talking. Careful, Harper.)

"More like if we're going to be a team, I've wanted it to be with a minimum of biting off of heads." Dick shrugged, still expressionlessly eating the apple off the dagger.

He tugged the speared fruit free with his teeth suddenly, a motion with no overt anger or savagery that was still somehow threatening with its animal artlessness; held it in his mouth like captured prey and placed the little double-edged dagger down on the counter with a sharp _tap,_ moving as though this was a gesture that said something, like he expected Roy to speak his silent language.

They weren't the same. Roy had killed people because they wanted to kill him, or they were an obstacle, or sometimes just because Oliver wanted them killed, but even then it was as a favor to the man he owed so much to, every time. He'd killed in open battle and murdered individuals for various forms of profit, but he'd never lived death the way Talon had, the way it seemed like Grayson still did under his careful, minimally confrontational tactics and big doe eyes.

Dick reached up and took the apple in his hand, leaving behind the bite that his teeth had already half-scissored away. Chewed at it with calm deliberation. _Crunch, crunch…crunch._

Roy wondered again if Grayson knew he had been scared to death of Talon when he was seventeen.

"I looked you up, you know."

Grayson's head shot up at that, but it must have been involuntary because he didn't ask anything, or turn around. "Owlman didn't bother to erase you, it turns out, I guess because nobody cared that you were gone. Richard Grayson, of the _Flying Graysons_. Child acrobat." He shook his head. Cute little family of three, and from the look of things the mom and dad had loved their blue-eyed boy enough to make Roy effing _sick_.

And he still hadn't put it together until now. "I can't believe I bought your act for so long. You're not helping us. You're _using_ us."

He was always a risk to have around. The new government might not care much about old news like the Wilson assassination in the wake of the War, and Owlman might not have the resources anymore to offer a worthwhile bounty, but there'd always been the chance of Wilson or Wayne themselves crashing through the window to pursue personal vendettas. Roy and Kori had already learned most of what Dick knew about surviving on the run, months ago. He would have wondered why they hadn't even considered turning on him, except he knew why not.

Dick swallowed his mouthful of apple. He did turn now, got Roy in his line of sight but still didn't exactly look at him. "I never pretended to want anything from you but backup."

"But you _do_ want more! Whole cover going but you're really just this pathetic little boy trying to get back something you can't. You've got this whole fucked-up fantasy life going on, don't you?"

Dick had crushed the apple in his hand. Pulped apple flesh was plopping wetly onto the countertop, juice puddling, and Roy wondered distantly if Dick was still going to bother to clean that up, to wipe it away so it wouldn't make a sticky spot that would turn into a smear of grime, or if the domesticity was over after this. His face was still empty, like a vacant lot bulldozed and blacktopped so recently there weren't even weeds, but there was tension in his back now, coiled around his spine like a snake. "I do not."

"What do you think Starfire will say, if I tell her she's been playing into your fantasies this whole time? You think she's going to—"

Dick's full weight barreled into him, and Roy found himself pinned against the counter, way more helpless than he'd ever wanted to be, with the sharp Formica corner in the small of his back and his head ringing against the wall, and his feet only barely in contact with the floor. And an unstable assassin bearing down on top of him, and something cold and sharp at his throat—

"What is so _wrong,_ " Talon snarled, inches from his face, "with wanting to have people to care about?"

"You don't _trick_ people into relationships, you brain-damaged fuck!" Roy snarled back. If Dick killed him, he killed him, but he figured his odds were pretty good; Dick was a cold-blooded killer, not a hot-blooded one, and while rejection led to murder kind of a lot, especially between people who were already primed to kill, he didn't think Grayson was at that point yet.

Grayson seemed to want to answer that, but he didn't; his face was a mess of feelings Roy couldn't even identify, and Talon was always silent and impassive so maybe feeling this much was taking all the headspace he'd need to assemble words.

"How far are you willing to go, anyway?" Roy demanded, eye to eye, ignoring the prick of whatever knife Grayson was holding to his neck. It was sliding up now to caress the skin over his carotid artery, and he tried not to twitch. "You gonna chain me up so I can't run away? Would you get down on your knees for Kori and whore yourself out to get her to stay with you?"

Grayson's face switched not to good clean anger but confusion. "She doesn't want," he said, a weird, clipped half-sentence that Roy remembered from when they were kids, when Talon had to speak.

"You telling me you haven't seen the way she looks at you? God, are you _blind?_ " Roy'd thought Dick was like him, willing to let 'sex with Kori' stay strictly in his fantasy life because the consequences of messing up if you did make a move were so dire on so many levels. She had _issues,_ after all. Then again so did Grayson, though Roy hadn't expected inability to notice himself getting ogled to be one of them. It happened kind of a lot, when they were out in public, and it wasn't like the guy wasn't hypersensitive to being watched. Maybe he just never realized why. Being made Talon clearly didn't remove the sex drive, unless that asshat Red Hood put a lot of effort into faking it. "Or maybe you're gay?" he guessed, lip curling, and gave an experimental squirm, because the blade at his neck was just getting less frightening at this point, and he was _mad_.

Dick still didn't kill him, but he did press him down harder, with a sudden chokehold as if to punish him for struggling, or for the insinuation, or both. There was already no air in his lungs and he was almost to the point of involuntary thrashing, like Blackfire just before her explosion, when the hand on his throat loosened up.

"Guess—maybe—you'd enjoy chaining me up—more than I thought," Roy gasped out, with as much sneer as he could manage around the need to breathe.

He wouldn't actually be that shocked if Grayson _did_ get off on torture. His life having been what it had. Though he'd definitely rather the torture wasn't done to him. The hip crushing his groin right now was more than enough pain for the day. He kind of really hoped his guess there was wrong, come to think of it.

The other man's mouth worked, like he wanted words but once again couldn't find them. He looked angry, now, and Roy wondered why _exactly_ that was apparently his goal, when he was in no position to turn the tables. He half expected a second tongue in his mouth in the next second, even if he was wrong, just to put him in his place, and he catalogued all the very short list of potential moves he could make from this position, none of which would stop him from getting stabbed in the jugular if Grayson took exception to resistance.

Dick let him go, and he was surprised. He'd thought for sure he wasn't getting away without one of them spilling blood, one way or another. "I thought we were friends," Grayson said, with no inflection and no expression whatsoever, and Roy fucking hated his creepy face.

He crossed the room in long stiff strides, pocketed his little plastic bag as if that was the goal instead of getting the table between them, for what time it'd buy him. "Do you see me teaching you guys Navajo words, or Kori expecting us to dress like Tamaraneans? You're the only one here trying to recreate your childhood."

"That's not why I was teaching you to freejump."

"But it is why the 'Flying Outlaws,' right?" he prodded, but Dick's face stayed blank. That blankness earned him a shrug. "I'm curious now," said Roy, who apparently had no sense of self-preservation. He blamed the heroin, even if he knew he'd already started to come down by the time they got back to the apartment, and this recklessness was at least half just him. "How much would you have taken? If one of us _had_ pushed you for sex, would you have given in just to keep us happy?" He narrowed his eyes at a sudden thought. "How many times have you done this before?"

It was a kind of victory when Dick finally shot him a look of pure scorn. "I've been fine on my own for ten years," he said. "And I'll be fine again."

And that was when Roy realized consciously that it was _over_ , that Kori was leaving for Tamaran and he had just burned all his bridges with the only friend he'd had left in the goddamn world. He was distracted enough by that that he barely heard, "I'm not as fucked up as you think, Harper," and didn't pay that much attention as Dick went and rinsed apple juice off his sticky left hand, wearing this forbidding shroud of calm.

He took the knife that stabbed the apple earlier off the counter where Roy had watched him put it down, where it had been this whole time because of _course_ he had more than one on him, and washed that, too. Whatever sharp thing he ultimately hadn't stabbed Roy to death with didn't make another appearance.

"Why did you decide to start playing houses with us?" Roy asked, after the water shut off and the knife vanished again. "If you'd been alone for ten years?"

"Because I'd been alone for ten years," replied Dick, a little sardonic. "It's not that much fun."

"Okay, so why _us?_ Why now?"

"I'd reminded Owlman I was still alive and then failed to kill him. I needed backup." Grayson paused, and then picked up the crushed apple he must have dropped when he attacked Roy, and added a little more quietly, eyes on his hands, "And then you said welcome to the team."

"So you were always planning to use us."

"That's what people like us _do!_ " Grayson slammed the ex-fruit into the trash can and rounded on him. "Give what you have to and take what you can. That's the code you live by! I offered you a bargain on _very favorable terms,_ knowing I could only trust you as long as I was useful. It wasn't supposed to _last_ this long. But it was—nice."

Roy had never heard Grayson say this much at once, and now the man turned to the side and looked like the little boy Roy'd called him, all mopey profile and droopy bangs. "I'll never belong to anybody ever again," he said, with a firmness that didn't make him seem any less young. "I _wouldn't_ have bent over backwards to keep you. But _damn_ if there's anything I wouldn't have done to keep you safe."

With that quiet, snarled confession he left, stormed out, really, and left the front door swinging open behind him. Leaving Roy in the kitchen, with apple juice congealing stickily on the countertop beside the sink, having apparently thrown away the actual loyalty of a pretty dangerous man. He wasn't sure he was sorry.

"Fuck you and the high horse you rode in on, Grayson," he muttered into the quiet.


	4. Homini Lupus

The drowsiness was coming in now, and Roy sat down at the table once more, where he'd been when the whole messy derailment of his evening started, sort of slumped. He should get up and close the door, but he couldn't really give a damn.

He didn't really want to find out how right Grayson was, when he said being alone wasn't that much fun. Going into space with Kori might be an option, except he really doubted he could possibly be useful on Tamaran, where all the fights would either be high on the meta scale or pure politics, which he was even worse at, really; he used to do negotiations for Queen sometimes, but mostly he was death and logistics. He was mostly the face of things when their main message was a threat, and to people like Starfire and Blackfire he'd be a threat like a tissue paper man shooting spitballs.

 _People like us shouldn't get mixed up in stuff at their level,_ Oliver told him cheerfully years and years ago, but he forgot his own advice when they invited him into the Society, lured by the advantages and then the prospect of being part of the new world order. And that was what brought you down, Queen, Roy thinks. Well, that and Shiva.

Not that they'd ever really had the option of walking away, not once the Society seriously considered Oliver as a member. If you weren't with them, after all, you were against them. And beings like Ultraman and Superwoman crushed humans like The Archer as if they were ants.

But Owlman was one of the big players, with no power to his name Queen hadn't had, and Luthor had been fighting Ultraman for years before the war ever began, so maybe it wasn't the powers after all. Maybe he and Oliver were just small people, people who just couldn't measure up, making excuses.

Roy hated coming down off a high. Actually, based on the last hour or so he wasn't sure he was that happy with being high in the first place. Not that his needle had summoned Blackfire, or otherwise really caused any of the mess that tonight had made of his normal life of robbery and mayhem. Be smart, Harper.

Speaking of smart, Kori had paper on her—nearly twenty-five thousand last he checked, which was a hell of a lot more than anyone would pay for him—and that fight had not been subtle. Bounty types or cops could be here any time. He should leave. Seemed unnecessarily shitty to disappear without saying bye to Kori, though, assuming she hadn't caught her taxi already and blasted out of orbit. Of course, the way tonight was going he'd probably just argue with her, too, if she showed.

He couldn't quite convince himself to get up. Most of his gear was packed, as always, but if he had to leg it in a hurry he was going to have to leave some of the heavier stuff, and while he probably _could_ get a new RPG he hated to have to. The arms market had been a _mess_ by the end of the war, with everyone selling to everyone and the old black-market customers running the new post-coup government, and now the _new_ new government was proving way more competent than they had any right to be, Luthor or not. Maybe if he ditched the Remington and the tripod…no, shit….

Kori bounded through the gaping door just as he was starting to drift off, and he sat up straight, his stomach only rolling slightly at the sharp motion. "Roy," she greeted, and smiled at him.

He'd never seen her quite this happy, could count on his fingers and toes the number of times she'd used his first name in all the months they'd worked together. It was a little surreal; hard not to see an overlay of her coolly attempting to murder her sister earlier that same night, because if he hadn't known her he could have mistaken her for a sweet, innocent young lady right now. She had shaken off the shock of losing the inheritance she'd clung to like a talisman for as long as he'd known her pretty quickly. But then, that was Kori. She went for what she wanted and she rarely allowed herself to brood.

She was getting off this planet, she was going home, she'd fix the problem one way or another. This chapter of her life was over. No more chains, no more skulking in the dark. No more outlaw.

Definitely no more Flying Outlaws.

"Hey," he answered, knowing his smile wasn't very convincing. "Taxi coming in?"

"It will be here in three days." That made sense, now he thought about it—interstellar distances were big, and even though it was obvious that alien spaceships routinely went faster than light for there to even _be_ space taxis, there was probably a whole lot of space to go through between Earth and the nearest major shipping lane, or however it worked. But now Kori was looking back and forth, still smiling but sort of puzzled. "Where is Dick?"

"Greywing's gone," Roy answered, like using his handle instead of his name would make any difference. Like that even _was_ his name. Roy'd started using it after finding it in the old newspaper coverage for the child acrobat, mostly to see what would happen when the guy who still seemed more machine than man sometimes, even a decade after claiming his freedom, was slapped in the face with something from his freakishly happy childhood, and Kori picked it up from him. And the guy never said a word. Roy still didn't know if he liked it or hated it or didn't _care_.

Fiery eyebrows drew together. "Gone?"

"He left."

"Well, when will he be back? He _will_ be back, yes?"

"I…uh, I don't know." All his stuff was still here, but then, that stuff was pretty nearly all acquired since they'd become a three-man team. Grayson had brought almost nothing in with him; he might intend to leave the same way. Roy had never inquired into where he kept his money. (Manners, in a gang like this—an interest in someone's money was practically an open threat.)

Kori frowned now, the majestic frown that had made him half believe her story of being royalty on her homeworld from the start. (Slaves who claim to have been royalty in their native land are not necessarily to be believed, but he should never have doubted her.) "Is he...sulking about Blackfire?"

"I doubt it," said Roy. He wasn't really sure _what_ had been going on in Grayson's head up on that roof, but he was pretty sure _he'd_ been the one who cared most about the older princess's life, which was just _sad_ , Roy Harper being the sympathetic one out of _any_ goddamn set of people. He slouched back in his chair. "What's it matter, anyway? If you just want to say goodbye, you can leave a note or something."

"He does not wish to come to Tamaran," Kori realized aloud. She sounded…sad. Kori _never_ sounded sad; when she was sad she got angry. "You are coming, aren't you?"

"If you want," said Roy, feeling the floor roll under his feet again even though the building was suffering no further threats to its structural integrity. Apparently Kori'd just _assumed_ she wasn't breaking up the band and they were all going to Tamaran now. "What for, though?"

"You…do not want to see Tamaran?" And was it that simple? She wanted to show them her home, because she was proud of it, and they were her friends? Was _Roy_ the one who was shitty at friendship on this team, somehow? "Commercial spaceships are very comfortable," she added, watching him closely. "And none of us is wanted by the Golden Lamps. It will not be unpleasant."

"Kori, if you want me, I'm there. I just didn't know if you'd have the time for doing the tourist thing."

"Until I regain my birthright, I will have nothing but time." She shrugged, all gracious unconcern. "You were right. If I killed her for the throne, and the act became known, I would need to wage war against my own world to ever rule it. I am not ready to make such a sacrifice. It was unwise. You and Greywing have always advised me well."

 _Oh_ , no. This needed to be nipped in the bud. "I'm not _moving to Tamaran_ to become your advisor, Kori."

She…yeah, she pouted. Not fair. So not fair. "Why not?"

Because isolating himself in an unfamiliar environment, totally dependent on one person, sounded like a really terrible idea even if it was someone he pretty much trusted not to up and backstab him, and also he wasn't convinced she wasn't going to wind up starting a civil war. And being in the middle of a war where _everyone_ was more powerful than him sounded like the worst idea ever, even if Kori's side _won_. The Injustice War was bad enough. "My life's ambition isn't to be anyone's crippled pet alien."

Pink energy flickered around her fists, and her jaw worked. Somewhat surprisingly, the kitchen did not get trashed in the next several seconds. "I am _not her,_ " Kori grated out. "Why do both of you keep _doing_ this?"

Shit. "I didn't mean it like that. I just…think about what you said to your sister. She was pathetic because she couldn't beat you at hand-to-hand or fly. I can't do those things either." He would be weak on Tamaran, and Roy had spent his whole life avoiding weakness. "I'll come, like I said, if you want me. But I can't _stay._ "

Something like understanding in Kori's expression. "And what does Richard say?"

"We didn't really discuss it." Roy paused. "He thinks you're splitting on us, though. He seemed kind of broken up about it, honestly."

"Do you think he will want to come?"

After what Roy said to him? He had no idea. Possibly only if Starfire and Greywing could leave Arsenal behind. "Maybe."

"We will all be free on Tamaran," Kori concluded, clearly brooking no argument.

And Roy would admit that being the guest of royalty was way better than scratching out an illegal living while trying to stay two steps ahead of meta-assisted law enforcement, and if it all went to shit, well, he'd never liked things boring.

"Sounds good," he said. And it did. He'd never been _really_ unfree, beyond a few hours in lockup here and there 'til he made bail, and while he'd technically been a criminal since he was thirteen, those first months on the street, scrabbling to survive, he'd been such an emotional mess then that the constant fear of starvation or assault or arrest were almost a welcome distraction, and by the time they weren't anymore, he was just numb.

He'd spent less than two years on the run as an adult, outside Queen's protection, and it was already exhausting. Better than boring, yeah; normality sounded like an even worse trap, but still. He missed being able to go out in the street without worrying about being recognized and hunted down. He missed _not_ having to be just a little bit on guard all the time, even if even _before_ he could be anything other than hypervigilant only because he usually had half a dozen guys watching out for him in public, and the cops couldn't _touch_ the Archer or anyone in his employ unless they fucked up something bad.

The war ended, for everyone else, but for people like him it got worse once it was over—and he'd never had ambitions to be a veteran in the first place. He joined the mob, not the army. (When he was seventeen, he thought it wouldn't be long before he'd never have to be afraid again, and he honestly thought Talon was one of the worst things he'd ever face.)

Dick hadn't been free like that, breathing without fear in his lungs, since he was _six_.

"Did Greywing take his phone?" Kori asked, locating her own, which had somehow survived the fight with Blackfire.

Roy shrugged.

…he _hated_ caring about people. Damn Richard Grayson's emotionally manipulative ass.

Dick's ringtone sounded tinnily from just down the hall, and a few seconds later he skulked in at the door, looking embarrassed, in the expressionless way Roy was pretty sure is his _genuine_ embarrassed face, not the disarming one he pulled when he'd screwed up and wanted people to stop being mad at him. Had he even gone anywhere, or was he already coming back? Kori's face lit up again when she saw him.

"So we're going to Tamaran?" Grayson asked, looking at neither of them.

"Three days," said Starfire.

Roy remembered, as if from another lifetime, that they'd had plans for tomorrow. "Are we still going to go through with the job for Kord?" he asked.

Kori's eyebrows drew down. They had enough time to make the snatch and follow through, definitely, and Roy was after all planning to come back to Earth at some point, and would like to still have a reputation for getting the job done, when he did. "You are sure," she asked again, "that he does not want the girl to keep?"

Roy was the one who'd gotten them the job, of course; he was the only one with contacts, for what they were worth. "Or to resell," he confirmed. He had levels to which he would not sink even if both his team members _hadn't_ had personal reasons to refuse to be involved in human trafficking. He was not a good man, but he had _some_ standards. He checked the job out _really_ thoroughly when the target turned out to be seven. "It's just standard extortion. Industrial espionage stuff. She'll be home again in a few days."

"Very well," Kori pronounced.

"Before I go start the last round of surveillance," said Dick to her, "help me start deciding what to pack? Supplies for offworld?"

And then somehow he got Kori thinking about Earth products to bring back as souvenir-offering things for her parents. ( _Parents._ Who were _alive._ Holy shit. Roy knew people had them, obviously, just…holy shit.) She was growing very nearly bubbly.

"The two of us will have to rebase to the holding site while you're stalking," Roy said to Grayson, while Kori was debating the merits of Hostess cupcakes. Dick cut his eyes sidelong at him, but nodded, before turning back to Starfire. They'd get this apartment cleared out and be ready to leave the planet as soon as they made the handoff. They wouldn't come back here after tonight. In spite of Dick's gallon of milk and new box of breakfast cereal and all the fresh fruit.

Roy leaned back against the counter, in the same place Dick had pinned him not half an hour ago, Formica hard in the small of his back, and watched the two of them.

He didn't have to come to Tamaran, he thought. Kori wanted her friends with her, but she'd be satisfied with just one, especially if it was that one. Grayson had nothing to tie him to Earth; he could go with Kori and never look back, and maybe away from the planet where all the Superwoman shit went down she'd finally start to feel comfortable enough with her own skin to make a move on the moron, and then they'd live happily ever after on Tamaran. He could be her ninja assassin consort and help her win her civil war with a series of knives to the back. Roy wasn't a moron. There was no place in any of that for him.

(Ever since Richard Grayson had appeared on a roof in Detroit and insinuated himself into their partnership, he'd known this was coming. At some level, he'd been getting ready for it all along. They didn't need him. They never had.)

((There were moments where he'd thought about making a move on Kori not so much because she was incredibly gorgeous as just in hopes of staking a claim to a place in her life that had nothing to do with how useful he was. But he knew a terrible idea when he thought it. (The same strategy would work better against Dick, who was, it turned out, stupid enough to cling and cling like he thought people were something you got to _keep_ , but that would be markedly less fun and would probably have made Kori leave. And it would still destroy them both in the end.) Roy'd seen enough couples together for mismatched reasons to know how that turned out. And he had his pride, anyway.))

(((Why couldn't Grayson have let it stay just work; Roy knew how to do work; he was with Queen for fifteen years and never made the mistake of _caring_ , even though the job was practically his whole life. Even though Oliver liked to play at being the patriarch, warm hand-clapping on shoulders and inner-circle Christmas parties and little tests and gestures of trust, he was always careful not to get too attached, and wasn't he right, didn't he watch the man's head roll into a gutter? Roy knew better than to care and he hated them both for making him let his guard down even though he knew better, and now they were going to leave. They were always going to leave.)))

((((Being left behind was better than being thrown out, though. Leaving first was best of all.))))

"Roy," said Dick. And he'd crossed the room in his stupid ninja way and was standing too close, though he didn't try to touch him, at least, not this soon after the little holding-at-knifepoint incident. Normally the idea of Grayson voluntarily touching anybody would be laughable, but Roy wasn't counting anything out today. He'd almost brushed his fingertips over Kori's elbow for a second there, when she beamed at him, and everything was just generally going crazy. "You're coming, right?"

"Of course he is," said Kori, as she closed the apartment door and set the lock with careful precision lest it break in her hand. "He promised me."

And the princess of Tamaran looked over her shoulder with big expectant green eyes, and the man who had been Talon bit a little at his lower lip in uncertainty that might be real or might be feigned, and then they both smiled so bright it _hurt_ when Roy rolled his eyes and gave a sigh. "Yeah, yeah, I'm coming to Tamaran. Let's just get this one last job done before we go."


End file.
